"Know what your audience wants"

There are very few statements that disgust me more, on a creative-minded dare I say artistic level. Don't get me wrong, I do care what readers think, why else would I have beta-readers? Sure, there's only a few, but if they have some issue, the same issue mind you, with the text, I have probably made a Bad Dobby, and will correct it.

What I will not do is read whatever genre I'm writing in just so that I do check off all the requirements that make my story a (insert whatever the fuck the genre is) story.

"Know what your audience wants" if we take this statement at face value, we would have to deal with a lot more superficial vampire love triangle stories... then again, we do have Twilight, the Vampire Diaries, and probably a plethora of vamplovetri stories I have never even heard of.

Not that fantasy is devoid of clones... one could say that ever since Tolkien wrote his crap on paper...err... masterpiece, we have been seeing the good old prof emulated all over the place. But that ain't true, sure we got the heroic fantasy blend, with them orcses and dragonses and mighty armies clashing, all in a non-gore PG-13 friendly writing style that drives home the delusion that only the bad guys die and war is a rather bloodless affair. (I wrote about that bit in an earlier entry) These heroic thingies usually involve saving the world, a deed performed by a hero on his hero's journey.

And yes, there are some tropes that even I have surrendered to. Then again, these are tropes that have been around since mankind started telling stories. War is an all time classic, be it the Iliad, or Romeo and Juliet, we've always got a war. Sure, in the Bard's tragedy it's a gang war, so to speak, but if the two families were having no issues whatsoever the two crazy kids would meet at a party, fall in love, and eventually marry. Kinda boring. Hells, even Stephanie Meyer realized that to get some tension running, you need to have a conflict. So calling this a trope is maybe not correct...

Big Bad wants to rule the world, ok, that is a trope, Voldemort, Sauron, Takhisis, Lord Foul, the list is long. Add to that megalomania, the flaw these villains have... usually there's more than one.

The hero... or the group of heroes... they are on a quest, whether bestowed by the gods or some manipulating consortium of good guys who are too lazy to get their own hands dirty. The heroes go willingly and knowingly, solve many a problem and are victorious, there might be some satisfying end at the first volume but that's not a requirement.

The antagonists... the orcses and whathaveyous that throw their bodies in the heroes' path and on their weapons, because let's face it, whether it's stormtroopers or orcses or whoknowswhat they never pose a real threat! They are there to allow the heroes to shine, look at Leggolass and his archery skills, blindfolded with one hand behind his back he still manages to shoot by pulling on the string with his teeth...

The love interest... it's usually the hero's weakness, something the bad guy can use against the hero, far be it from the love interest to kick just as much ass as the hero! Yea, bad trope, that... usually, in our patriarchal western fantasy, we have the damsel, usually in distress, and the shining, male, hero who rescues her, heroically of course. Bad trope indeed.

The wise old man (or woman) goes hand in hand with the entire hero's journey...

I could go on, but frankly I don't wanna.

Read Shattered Dreams, just the first chapter, it shows what I do with tropes. Of course I can't escape them all, that is impossible. The protagonist is a person, even a robot has a personality, so whether male or female or gender-neutral, we read about a person, or persons, going on a perilous journey. That person is different, in one way or another, otherwise, when danger looms near, that person would cower un-heroically behind a bush, hoping the bad things go away.

Some tropes we cannot escape, but I don't need to read the fiction top 10 to know that. Others... why the fuck would I want to copy the stuff someone else already did??? Seriously! Were I to write the umpteenth clone of Lord of the Rings, would you wanna read that? No! Of course not! Because you have read the original, and this isn't pizza where everything is basically a variation of dough with tomato-sauce, cheese, and whatever that particular vendor wants to dump atop the pie (or what you want dumped on top the pie). You don't buy a book to get the same old same old, because in the end you want to be entertained, and while my 5 yr old quasi-goddaughter loves Frozen there will come a time when she will not want to watch it anymore because she has seen the film too many times.

And I don't write for 5 yr olds. I do not write variations of the same just because everyone and their dogs is reading Twilight or whatever the fuck is the latest fad. I write stories I would love to read! I want to be surprised, shocked, kept focused on the story, knowing whatever happens, it will be unexpected. So I write this sort of thing, because I believe a story where tropes are put on their heads, stories that mix genres (from a narrative point), stories that will keep you guessing, that will keep you wanting more are superior to the shit that the audience expects you to write.

I want to read stories that keep me guessing, that are as relentless in pace and suspense to rival The Dark Knight... and so I write them.

Fuck whatever expectations someone may have!